Writing The Song "Mandolin Moon"

Sister Hazel

Ryan Newell of clients Sister Hazel: I love the way “Mandolin Moon” was created.

We were at a hotel. Jett, Ken, and I struggled all day long to write a song. We got halfway done with one.

After Ken and Jett left, I thought, “Songwriting should not be that hard. It should be a stream of consciousness. It should be: What do you feel right this second?”

I grabbed an acoustic guitar. What would I play off the top of my head if someone asked me to play something? I started playing the riff to “Mandolin Moon.”

I went to Jett's room and asked, “What do you think about this?”

He said, “I'm going to write a verse. You write a verse. And then we're going to we're going to try to get a chorus on this thing.”

In other words… let's do this as fast as we can before the window shuts. And we wrote the bulk of “Mandolin Moon” that night.

Ken came in the next day, and we knocked out the chorus. It was that easy.

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Clients:

• Huey Lewis & The News

• Cowboy Mouth

• The Fabulous Thunderbirds

• Sister Hazel

• Red Wanting Blue

• The Devlins

• John “Papa” Gros

• Daniel Glass

• Professor Louie & The Cromatix

• Blue Elan Records